A Mom Fights for Recess in TX Schools

I recently came across this paper which argues that “No Child Left Behind” can contribute to childhood obesity. According to a synopsis of the study by the the Freakonomics guys:

“Schools facing increased pressures to produce academic outcomes may reallocate their efforts in ways that have unintended consequences for children’s health. For example, schools may cut back on recess and physical education in favor of increasing time on tested subjects.” Caveats apply, but the scholars find that “schools that were on the margin of passing have about a 0.5 percentage point higher rate of overweight in the following year.”

No big surprise there, I guess.

Meanwhile, fellow Texas mom blogger Just a Mom in Mesquite, aka Corrie Meyer, is working overtime to get recess back into Texas schools. As she’s noted, recess is becoming endangered for a variety of reasons:

in Texas schools (along with a vast amount of schools across the country), the definition of recess is also accompanied with the terms “optional”, “waste of valuable learning time”, “unnecessary mandate”, “dangerous” and “expensive”.

Amazingly, Corrie has succeeded in getting a bill filed in the state legislature requiring that Texas provide 20 minutes of unstructured, mandatory recess in elementary schools. You can support the passage of the bill here.